Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Hard-throwers are always a lot of fun to watch. Why? I don’t know. But they are. In particular, it’s pretty awesome to see triple digits on the radar gun, which is always an impressive feat. This year, per PITCHf/x, 16 different pitchers have combined to throw 391 pitches registering at 100 mph (technically 99.5 or harder). Here are the members of the 2010 “100 club.”(sorted by maximum velocity)

MLB Rank

Pitcher

Max Velocity

1

Joel Zumaya

102.2

2

Neftali Feliz

101.6

3

Henry Rodriguez

101.1

4

Justin Verlander

101

5

Daniel Bard

100.8

6

Ubaldo Jimenez

100.6

7

Stephen Strasburg

100.4

8

Jonathan Broxton

100.2

9

Andrew Cashner

100.1

10

Jason Motte

100.1

11

Kyle Farnsworth

100.1

12

Brandon Morrow

99.8

13

Santiago Casilla

99.7

14

Zack Greinke

99.7

15

David Price

99.6

16

Robinson Tejeda

99.5

(sorted by number of pitches at or greater than 99.5 mph)

MLB Rank

Pitcher

#

1

Joel Zumaya

230

2

Neftali Feliz

36

3

Daniel Bard

26

4

Justin Verlander

20

5

Ubaldo Jimenez

19

6

Stephen Strasburg

17

7

Henry Rodriguez

12

8

Andrew Cashner

10

9

Kyle Farnsworth

6

10

Jonathan Broxton

4

11

Jason Motte

3

12

Santiago Casilla

2

13

Brandon Morrow

1

14

Zack Greinke

1

15

Robinson Tejeda

1

16

David Price

1

First of all, how about Joel Zumaya. Talk about blowing away the competition. Now let’s hope that he can recover from the brutal arm injury he suffered last month against the Twins. Second, an important note - these numbers are coming directly from the PITCHf/x data and have not been adjusted for ballpark errors. The 100 mph pitches from Tejada and Morrow were recorded at Kauffman Stadium and Progressive Field, respectively; both of those parks at least appear to be running “hot” this year. Any input on this front is always more than welcome.